Posts Tagged ‘Canon’

Here’s another glitch/bug with the Canon EOS-1DX (and shared by the 5D Mark III):

Immediately after creating an image and during the time in which it automatically appears on the camera’s display, if you zoom in to check the focus, then try to scroll to a neighbouring image, the camera will remain locked on the image just captured.

The inability to scroll to other images is caused by turning on auto image review to any of the timed durations, or the hold option. I believe this setting is on by default and is found in the red Shoot3 tab “Image review.” Therefore any 1DX or 5DIII taken straight out of the box should display this behaviour.

The solution is to turn off image review, which will allow you to directly zoom into the image by pressing the magnify button and scroll to neighbouring images at any time, no matter how soon after capture. This also works if you have programmed the Set button to initiate image zoom, as I have.

This raises the question of whether this behaviour is a glitch, or whether it’s intentional.

After giving it some thought, I think it’s intentional. With auto image review on, after taking a photo, when that photo first appears, and if you try to scroll to another image, it just disappears and the screen goes black (and actually changes your shutter speed or aperture (or whatever you have the rear dial assigned to do in shooting mode). The logic is that the photographer’s priority is shooting, not review, because if the photographer really wanted to review images, s/he’d hit the playback button and consciously switch out of image capture mode. If during initial auto image review you press the playback button, you can scroll through images, whether zoomed or not.

I don’t have my 1DIV handy, but pulled out a 1DIII for comparison. Same basic principles with it. Auto image review only allows you to see the most recently captured image. You can’t scroll to another image, unless you press the playback button. Also, during auto image review, you can’t zoom in. The screen goes black because the camera thinks you want to set the AF point. I.e you’re still in image capture mode rather than image review mode.

I think the 5DIII/1DX (never tried the 7D) are probably the first to allow us to zoom into the image during auto image review. Previous cameras forced us to hit the playback button first.

When auto image review is turned off, the logic is that the photographer doesn’t want to see the images, therefore, if one presses the zoom (or assigned the set) button, one is consciously deciding to review images and may want to scroll through more than just the most recent one.

There has been some online discussion about the Canon EOS-1DX locking up randomly and reporting Err 80 error code. I recently received mine and have been able to reproduce the problem repeatedly and consistently as follows:

I’ve set a bunch of custom settings and am not going to go through them all now, as I don’t feel they are the cause, rather, it’s related to the camera’s light meter. But, want to mention that I have disabled AF drive from the shutter release, so the fact the camera can’t shoot with either the lens cap on or pointed at something very dark, isn’t because it’s unable to lock focus. I strictly use the AF-ON button to activate focus, therefore, hitting only the shutter release should fire the camera every time.

Here’s what happened:

Some forum commenters believe it happens when spot metering and AF point is linked, so I turned on that custom function, put a lens cap on, closed the eyepiece shutter, played back a photo, hit the shutter release and the camera worked fine. I set the meter to spot metering (makes sense, no?), put the lens cap on, closed the eyepiece shutter, played back a photo, hit the shutter release and the camera locked up. The reason for covering both the lens with a cap and closing the eyepiece shutter is to simulate an environment with zero ambient light (one forum commenter complained about this happening while photographing stars)

Pulled battery and switched back to multi-segment metering – worked fine.

Turned off the spot metering linked to AF point feature, set metering to spot, played back some images and with cap on and eyepiece shutter closed, camera locked up every time I hit the shutter release to try to take photos. I’m not pushing the AF-ON button, so AF is inactive and not a factor.

AND, the exact same thing happened with partial metering selected.

With the cap on but the eyepiece shutter open, the camera will shoot, I guess because some ambient light in the room is getting through the eyepiece.

Sometimes the camera reports the Err 80 problem, but other times it just simply won’t shoot, but other functions remain. For example, AF will rack back and forth, but it won’t lock (only tried it in One Shot mode so far). I can enter live view, use live view AF (contrast detect based AF) to lock on a subject, shoot off as many frames as I want, exit live view, and the camera still will not release the shutter. The only solution is to pull the battery to reset the camera.

Then this happens, but only sometimes: with the eyepiece shutter open and cap off, the correct exposure in the scene is ISO 6400 1/30 f/1.2 and with spot or partial metering set, the camera’s continuous drive advance drops from maximum at that shutter speed to about 3fps. Point the spot meter area to where correct exposure is around 1/125 f/1.2 and it hits full fps. Recompose to where exposure is around 1/80 f/1.2 and fps drops back to 3fps. If I let the camera sit for 5 or so minutes (I have auto power off set for 4 minutes), then use it again, it will blaze away at full fps with the same settings that previously caused the fps drop.

Finally, the lock up problem DOES NOT happen with evaluative or average metering.

In conclusion: my suggestion is DO NOT use spot metering or partial metering in very low light situations if there is any chance the camera will be in a zero light environment, which is what seems to trigger the lock-up.

I plan to post a more in-depth impressions review once I’ve had the chance to use the camera in various situations. But other than this lock up bug, which honestly would never have been an issue for me because I never use spot or partial metering modes, the camera so far seems like a solid upgrade from the 1D Mark IV.